Leadership and Collaborative Governance Training

Effective councillors can help to change the world – or at least their part of it. However, it doesn’t get any easier for a councillor to be effective – the challenges of financial austerity, an ageing population, high inequality, climate change, local unemployment, contentious planning applications and problems with many local public services mean that the job is today even more demanding than ever before. Our Leadership and Collaborative Governance Training Package  provides local councillors with an effective and flexible training programme to help them address these challenges. It has been tested widely in several deliveries of the NILGA Leadership Programme for Elected Members in Northern Ireland.

“For the past four years, we have worked closely in partnership with Governance International to deliver our Leadership Development Programme for Councillors in Northern Ireland. This programme, which is annually updated, has inspired each cohort of councillors to widen their visions, raise their ambitions and skill themselves up to play leading roles in their communities and their councils. The modules are challenging, highly informative and fun – and the programme is helping to make local government in Northern Ireland more effective.”

Fiona Douglas, Northern Ireland Local Government Association

The modules are grounded in a practical understanding of the roles of councillors and the challenges and barriers they face in playing these roles. They help participants to develop new ways of thinking and to draw upon new ideas that will enhance their leadership skills and ability to put collaborative governance into practice. Key to this is helping to increase the personal effectiveness and impact of councillors as representatives of their local area.

The Leadership Programme is based on a three-dimensional approach which has been widely tested and which is accessible to all councillors – the Context, Theory and Practice Model:

• Context: understanding of the context and challenges (place, people and systems).
• Theory: rigorous conceptual and theoretical frameworks which give councillors the knowledge, skills and capabilities they need.
• Practice:  understanding how to enhance personal resilience and practical responses to the challenges. 

The focus of the Leadership Programme is on enabling participants to put the learning into practice in their own context.  Throughout the Programme, innovative Governance International case studies and successful examples from local government in the UK and internationally will be used to highlight alternative ways of understanding and dealing with the practical issues that councillors have to address. In this way, the Programme  helps councillors to find  innovative, practical solutions tailored to the challenges they face, so that they can more effectively serve the people they represent.

We are keen to tailor our Leadership and Collaborative Governance Training Programme to your needs. You can start the conversation by contacting tony.bovaird@govint.org or by filling out a short contact form.